Transcript

1.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos looks to the future
The following script is from "Amazon" which aired on Dec. 1, 2013. Charlie Rose is the
correspondent. Draggan Mihailovich, producer.
There has never been a company quite like Amazon. Conceived as an online book seller, Amazon has
reinvented itself time and again, changing the way the world shops, reads and computes. Amazon
has 225 million customers around the world. Its goal is to sell everything to everyone. The brainchild
of Jeff Bezos, Amazon prides itself on disrupting the traditional way of doing things. A few weeks ago
the company announced it was launching Sunday delivery.
Tonight, for the first time, you will be introduced to perhaps Amazon's boldest venture ever.
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60 Minutes Overtime

2.
Amazon unveils futuristic plan: Delivery by drone
Amazon's secret R&D project aimed at delivering packages to your doorstep by "octocopter" mini-
drones with a mere 30-minute delivery time
Over the last month, 60 Minutes was granted unprecedented access inside Amazon's operations. If
you have ever wondered what happens after you've clicked and placed an order on Amazon, take a
look. If there is such a thing as Santa's workshop, this would be it.
A 1.2 million square foot distribution center, the size of more than 20 football fields, gearing up for
the holiday shopping season.
There are 96 of these warehouses worldwide, what Amazon calls fulfillment centers. Tomorrow, on
what is known as Cyber Monday, it's expected that more than 300 items a second will be ordered on
Amazon.
Jeff Bezos: If you go back in time 18 years, I was driving the packages to the post office myself, and
we were very primitive.
Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon, with an estimated worth of at least $25 billion. He sold
his first book on Amazon in another era, back in 1995.
"If you go back in time 18 years, I was driving the packages to the post office myself, and we were
very primitive."
Charlie Rose: Part of what Amazon customers expect--we want it now. What's happening at the
fulfillment centers that have made that possible?
Jeff Bezos: The secret is we're on, like, our seventh generation of fulfillment centers. And we have
gotten better every time. When I was driving the packages myself, one of my visualizations of
success is that we might one day be big enough that we could afford a forklift. And...
Charlie Rose: You've got a forklift.
Jeff Bezos: We've got forklifts.
There's very little Amazon doesn't have.
Dave Clark: Right now we're really in the center of what is the physical manifestation of Earth's
biggest selection.
Amazon vice president Dave Clark showed us how the process begins. After the products arrive into
the building, they are immediately scanned. The products are then placed by stackers in what seems
to outsiders as a haphazard way...a book on Buddhism and Zen resting next to Mrs. Potato Head...
Charlie Rose: Here's what I want to know. This is a Swiffer.
Dave Clark: It is a Swiffer.
Charlie Rose: It's sitting next to the Encyclopedia of World History.

3.
Dave Clark: Of course.
Charlie Rose: That doesn't make any sense to me. Does it make sense to you?
Dave Clark: It, it does.
Charlie Rose: What?!
Dave Clark: Can those two things, you look at how these items fit in the bin.
Charlie Rose: Yeah, oh!
Dave Clark They're optimized for utilizing the available space.
Charlie Rose: Oh I see.
Dave Clark: And we have computers and algorithmic work that tells people the areas of the building
that have the most space to put product in that's coming in at that time.
Amazon has become so efficient with its stacking, it can now store twice as many goods in its
centers as it did five years ago.
Dave Clark: Anything you want on, on Earth you're gonna get from us.
Charlie Rose: Anything you want on Earth you're gonna get from us?
Dave Clark: Yeah, that's where we're headed I believe.
Once your order is placed, a so-called pick ambassador walks the aisles, plucking and scanning your
items before placing them in bins. Those bins eventually wind up in front of a packer, who knows
exactly how big of a box to use based on the weight and amount of items, your address is slapped
onto the box and then a picture is taken of your address label, gadgets known as "shoes" sort and
divert the boxes to the appropriate spiral chute, based on the postal code. This accelerates the
delivery process. The boxes are then loaded onto awaiting trucks, which are assigned to particular
regions -- Raleigh, North Carolina, in this case. Amazon uses more trucks than planes because so
many distribution centers have been built near customers.
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4.
60 Minutes: Segment Extras
Bezos recalls Amazon's riskiest move
Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and CEO, tells Charlie Rose why he once handed over 20 percent of the
company and what he got in return. Bezos says,...
Charlie Rose: If you can do this with all these products, what else can you do? You guys can organize
the world?
Dave Clark: Well, you've gotta start somewhere...
But the company has also started same day deliveries of groceries in two cities -- milk, vegetables
and dry goods, to name a few items. Amazon Fresh began in Seattle and only after five years has it
expanded to Los Angeles.
Charlie Rose: What is it you're trying to learn that's taken you five years to learn?
Jeff Bezos: How to make it make financial sense. You know, what's not to love? You order the
groceries online and we deliver 'em to your door. But that's very expensive.
Charlie Rose: But is this the Holy Grail for Amazon? I can deliver it on the same day?
Jeff Bezos: It's a possibility. If we can make this model work, it would be great because it extends the
range of products that we can sell.
Amazon is now flowing into other areas far removed from its original mission as an online book
seller.
Amazon Fashion, launched this fall, sells high-end clothing...
Charlie Rose: Tell me what is Amazon today?
Jeff Bezos: I would define Amazon by our big ideas, which are customer centricity, putting the
customer at the center of everything we do, invention. We like to pioneer, we like to explore, we like
to go down dark alleys and see what's on the other side.
On the other side of Amazon's online retailing is a business customers know little about.
It's called Amazon Web Services, AWS, and may soon become Amazon's biggest business. To keep
track of its massive online orders, Amazon built a large and sophisticated computing infrastructure.
Amazon figured out it could also expand that infrastructure to store data and run websites for
hundreds of thousands of outside companies and government agencies on what is known as the
cloud.
"We like to pioneer, we like to explore, we like to go down dark alleys and see what's on the other
side."
Charlie Rose: How much of the Internet, do you run?
Jeff Bezos: It's a good question. It's a lot though. And people...

5.
Charlie Rose: Well, what's a lot? What's the neighborhood?
Jeff Bezos: I could tell you this. Most Internet startups and a lot of big Internet companies run on top
of AWS. Netflix very famously, and you could say, "Oh that's very odd because Netflix in a way is a
competitor of Amazon."
Charlie Rose: Other than Netflix, who else uses AWS?
Jeff Bezos: Oh, big enterprises, big government institutions...
Charlie Rose: Like the CIA?
Jeff Bezos: The CIA.
Charlie Rose: Does that present any conflict for you, the fact that, that you provide the cloud that the
CIA uses for its data?
Jeff Bezos: We're building what's called a private cloud for them, Charlie, because they don't want to
be on the public cloud.
But the company continues to branch out in areas the public can see and touch. People read books
the same way for centuries until Amazon introduced the Kindle e-reader and Amazon has just
released its Kindle Fire HDX tablet - in typical Amazon style, without making a profit on the device.
Charlie Rose: So you sell this at break even?
Jeff Bezos: We sell this at break even and then we hope to...
Charlie Rose: That's a very thin margin.
Jeff Bezos: It's a very thin margin. But we hope to make money when you...
Charlie Rose: Sell all the stuff...
Jeff Bezos:...buy books and movies...
Charlie Rose: That's always been your philosophy.
Jeff Bezos: Exactly.
Bezos believes low costs ensure customer loyalty to Amazon, even if it's at the expense of profits.
Â Amazon is one of the rare companies that on a quarterly basis shows little profit and yet is beloved
by investors.
Jeff Bezos: In the long run, if you take care of customers, that is taking care of shareholders. We do
price elasticity studies. And every time the math tells us to raise prices.
Charlie Rose: But why don't you do it?
Jeff Bezos: Because doing so would erode trust. And that erosion of trust would cost us much more
in the long term.

6.
That long view, Bezos believes, gives Amazon a distinct edge.
Jeff Bezos: The long term approach is rare enough that it means you're not competing against very
many companies. 'Cause most companies wanna see a return on investment in, you know, one, two,
three years.
Charlie Rose: You don't care about that?
Jeff Bezos: I care, but I'm willing for it to be five, six, seven years. So just that change in timeline can
be a very big competitive advantage.
For example, Amazon's profits are redirected to building more distribution centers, like this one in
New Jersey. The more centers it constructs, the closer the customer and the faster the delivery. And
every time a new one goes up, publishers and traditional retailers shudder...
Charlie Rose: A lotta small book publishers and other smaller companies worry that the power of
Amazon gives them no chance.
Jeff Bezos: You gotta earn your keep in this world. When you invent something new, if customers
come to the party, it's disruptive to the old way.
Charlie Rose: Yeah, but I mean, there are areas where your power's so great and your margin, you're
prepared to make it so thin that you can drive people out of business and, and you have that kind of
strength. And people worry: Is Amazon ruthless in their pursuit of market share?
"When you invent something new, if customers come to the party, it's disruptive to the old way."
Jeff Bezos: The Internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie, you know, people can complain
about that, but complaining is not a strategy. And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the
future is happening to book selling.
Amazon is also pouring money into original television programming that can be streamed to Amazon
customers...like its first series, Alpha House, a comedy written by Doonesbury creator Garry
Trudeau about four Republican senators who live in the same townhouse. Amazon didn't select the
show the conventional, Hollywood way. Alpha House was picked out of thousands of scripts, with the
help of Amazon customers who reviewed the shows.
Charlie Rose: You are using your customer base to tell you rather than the opinion of some...
Jeff Bezos: That's exactly right.
Charlie Rose: Hollywood programmer?
Jeff Bezos: We're changing the green lighting process. Instead of a few you know studio executives
deciding what gets green lighted...
Charlie Rose: So-called tastemakers?
Jeff Bezos: Yes. We're using what some people would call crowd sourcing to help figure this out.
What other industry will Amazon disrupt? At Amazon's secret Lab 126 in California, designers and

7.
engineers are experimenting on next generation devices, the contents of which are eagerly
speculated about.
Charlie Rose: Are you working on a set top box that will allow people to watch streaming video and
not need to have cable television?
Jeff Bezos: I can't answer that question (laughs). I don't wanna talk about the future roadmap of our
devices. So I'll have to just ask you to stay tuned.
Charlie Rose: Soon?
Jeff Bezos: Charlie!
But during our visit to Amazon's campus in Seattle, Bezos kept telling us that he did have a big
surprise, something he wanted to unveil for the first time...
Jeff Bezos: Let me show you something.
Charlie Rose: Oh, man...Oh, my God!
Jeff Bezos: This...
Charlie Rose: This is?
Jeff Bezos:...is...these are octocopters.
Charlie Rose: Yeah?
Jeff Bezos: These are effectively drones but there's no reason that they can't be used as delivery
vehicles. Take a look up here so I can show you how it works.
Charlie Rose: All right. We're talking about delivery here?
Jeff Bezos: We're talking about delivery. There's an item going into the vehicle. I know this looks like
science fiction. It's not.
Charlie Rose: Wow!
Jeff Bezos: This is early. This is still...years away. It drops the package.
Charlie Rose: And there's the package.
Jeff Bezos: You come and get your package. And we can do half hour delivery.
Charlie Rose: Half hour delivery?
Jeff Bezos: Half hour delivery/and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds, which covers 86
percent of the items that we deliver.
Charlie Rose: And what is the range between the fulfillment center and where you can do this
within...